


Last Words

by cassyl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyl/pseuds/cassyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this, like in everything else, Sherlock has to have the last word.  Post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Words

**Author's Note:**

> Some text borrowed from Conan Doyle.

_If you follow this blog at all, then chances are you know what people have been saying about Sherlock Holmes. And if you haven’t heard, well, you know how to Google. I won’t repeat it here._

_Sherlock asked me to tell everyone that what they’re saying in the papers is true. But I can’t._

John’s fingers hover over his keyboard. Even now, even with Sherlock dead and gone (and no matter how badly John wishes it weren’t true, Sherlock _is_ gone), even though the lie cuts into him with every breath – despite all this, he can’t contradict Sherlock’s wishes. His last wishes, no less. ‘Tell anyone who’ll listen to you.’ He can’t bring himself to do that, but he won’t expressly disobey Sherlock’s instructions, either.

He lets out a short breath, selects CRTL, ALT, DELETE.

*

_Everything he told me was a lie._

This draft is even worse than the first and he only lets it linger for a second before the words are gone again.

*

He doesn’t know why he feels the need to do it. He’s had several very generous offers for book deals, and he’s turned them all down. But this, the blog, is different.

Of course, why, when it comes to Sherlock, is almost always a pointless question. Why put up with a man who keeps body parts in the refrigerator? Why go running all over London with someone who, half the time, can’t tell his company apart from that of a skull? Why sit there, night after night, watching Sherlock out of the corner of his eye for the slightest flicker of movement, hoping that something, anything, will happen?

John’s never bothered to ask himself why he writes about Sherlock. He never had any illusions, the way some people do, about being an artist. He never saw himself as a writer. But Sherlock . . . Sherlock is – was – no, still is, probably always will be the most interesting subject John can imagine. Maybe it’s about trying to bottle a little bit of that lightning, figure out what makes that beautiful machine tick. Or maybe – and he suspects this is why Sherlock’s final injunction to him hurts so much – maybe he just wants to bear witness to the incredible workings of that extraordinary mind.

Whatever the reason, John knows a single sentence – the last post on his blog – is not enough. Maybe there’s no way to do justice to Sherlock Holmes, but John knows he has to try.

*

_Sherlock Holmes was a bloody awful flatmate. He was a holy terror to live with, an impossible pain to talk to, an all-around nightmare. He never did the washing up, left his things all over the house. He once put human ash in the sugar bowl. That flat was probably the most dangerous place in all of London._

I don’t think anywhere else will ever feel like home.

Trite, says the voice at the back of his head that sounds like Sherlock. He’s inclined to agree.

*

_Sherlock Holmes was a force of nature. He was merciless and driving and shone like_

No.

*

There’s another draft, and then another, each more insufficient than the last. Again and again John finds himself facing a blank screen.

He can’t do this. He can’t. Not alone, not like this. Not at all.

Possibly it can’t even be done. Sherlock can’t be put into words, that’s the beauty of him. He’s something else entirely.

John makes himself another cup of tea.

Then, when that fails, he pours himself a stiff drink.

*

_I don’t know what to say about Sherlock. How can you sum up a man who defied all classification, who lived in a way most people can’t even conceive of?_

_Somehow, when I try to think of what to say, I keep coming back to the Allegory of the Cave. It’s the only scrap of Plato that ever managed to stick with me from school: all those people chained in place, watching brilliant shadows cross the wall, never knowing what shapes had cast them._

_That’s our world, Plato said, just shadows on the wall. That’s how most of us live our lives, heads down, only noticing what’s in front of us, without the slightest clue what’s really going on. But the other world, where the real shapes, the ones that cast the shadows, exist, that one Plato called the world of perfect form. And that’s Sherlock’s world._

_Sherlock Holmes existed in a world beyond ordinary perception. He noticed – really noticed – things that most of us can never hope to see, and because of it, he lived apart from other people. He told me once that being alone was all he had. At the time, it made me angry, but I think now that he was right. He saw things so clearly, so truly, that there was never any way he could exist on the same plane as the rest of us idiots._

_And really, I wouldn’t have wanted him to._

“Much too sentimental.”

John freezes, fingers still poised on the keys.

Of course. In this, like in everything else, Sherlock has to have the last word.

He doesn’t dare turn round, but he can’t fail to recognize the pressure of that slender hand curled around the back of his chair. “You think so?” He’s amazed at how calm he sounds. He flexes his left hand – perfectly steady.

“Mm.” Sherlock’s tone is disapproving, as if John’s failings somehow reflect on him. “Your reading of Plato is weak at best, and, flattering as it is that you think me a class above other men, I’m in the same realm as everyone else. I just—”

“—observe,” John finishes without missing a beat. Just like old times. “Yeah, I know.”

There is a silence between them. He can hear Sherlock breathing. It’s a sound that, an hour ago, might have seemed like the greatest gift he could imagine, but now it only makes him angry.

“How’d you do it, then?” This is, after all, the question Sherlock always wants him to ask. John’s the ‘conductor of light,’ the one who gives him the opportunity to demonstrate just how clever he really is.

“Not important,” Sherlock says, briskly dismissive.

John’s can feel his shoulders tensing. In the reflection on his screen, he can see the dark shape of a torso, nothing more. “No. No, I think I deserve an answer.” He swallows hard, fighting the urge to turn around. “Come on, out with it. I bet you’re dying to tell someone. There’s no way you of all people could pull something like this off without wanting to brag about it – only you haven’t had anyone to brag to, have you? So how’d you do it? Body double? Something to soften the impact? What’d you do, jump into a giant vat of shaving cream?”

“Do you really care?” There’s no genuine curiosity there. As always, Sherlock asks the question already assured he knows the answer.

And of course, as always, he does. “No, you know what?” John says. “You’re right. I don’t care how you did it. What I want to know is, how could you?”

“You had to believe, don’t you see?” Sherlock says shortly, annoyed at him, as usual, for not being clever enough to keep up. This, John thinks, is how he knows this is really happening. If Sherlock returned chastened and humble, he would know it was a dream. “It was the only way. You’re a lot of things, John, but a brilliant actor is not one of them. If any interested party had even the slightest doubt about my demise, any flaw in your performance would have confirmed it. You had to believe I was really dead.”

“No. No, sod all that. I don’t give a damn about your _justification_.” It’s incredible, how the anger boils up in him – he didn’t even seen it coming, and now it’s building up like it’s about to break. “I want to know how you could do that to me.” He realizes it must sound petty, that to Sherlock this is the least of all possible concerns, but he can’t stop. “I thought, for all your cruel jabs and your careless bloody indifference— I thought you—”

“What?” Sherlock asks, cutting him off. “That I cared for you?”

John can’t bring himself to dignify this with a response. His jaw locks. He looks away.

“I told you, John, I don’t _do_ that. I can’t. No room in the plan for sentiment.”

“Damn your plan!” John shouts. The words are torn from him, and they pain him on leaving. “To hell with you and your plans. I’m not talking about the game, Sherlock, I’m talking about two people, two human beings. You were the only person I had in the world, and you were—” Even now, he can hardly bring himself to say the word. “I thought you were dead.”

“I had to.”

John scoffs. “Now _that_ I don’t believe.”

For a long time, no sound comes from behind him. John watches the blinking cursor on his screen and waits. He hears Sherlock swallow, imagines the precise working of his throat. What would he look like if John turned around? Would he look just the same? Can he possibly be unchanged after all that’s happened? John half imagines his face as the bloody, broken thing he saw on the street outside St. Bart’s. Sometimes John imagines that battered figure is his own.

“He was going to kill you.”

That simmering inside him stills. “What?”

“Moriarty. He had a gunman on you – one on you, and two more on Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade. They had instructions to kill you if I didn’t jump.”

John wipes a hand across his mouth. “How—“

“That was what he wanted, to destroy me – every part of me.”

“Sherlock . . .” The words stick in his throat.

“So you see, I couldn’t care about you, not if I wanted you to live. I tried to do what I could to make it easier on you.” John thinks back to that moment, that little tender laugh when John tried to defend him. ‘I researched you,’ he’d said. But Sherlock is talking again – he’s always talking, always explaining after the fact, when it’s clear John has no hope of working it out for himself. “I couldn’t worry about what would happen after. All that mattered was that there would be an ‘after.’”

“It mattered to me,” John says. “To Mrs. Hudson, to Greg.”

“I know that now.” The hand that’s been resting on the back of his chair lifts, and John feels the weight of Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder. His whole body tenses and then, incredibly, goes lax. He takes a deep breath, and then another, fighting something – not anger, not anymore – that threatens to take over. He wants, unaccountably, to laugh.

“So,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even, “what now?”

“I think the first order of business is to finish this eulogy you seem set on writing. If I’m to begin anew, I suppose the old me ought to be duly memorialized.”

The hand on his shoulder is a welcome anchor, and he leans into it, just a little, as he repositions his fingers over the keyboard. “Well?” he prompts. “What should I say?”

Sherlock considers for a moment, and then John can fairly hear his lips curl into a self-satisfied smile. John finds himself smiling, too. “Take this down.”

_It is with a heavy heart that I take to this blog to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent and, I admit, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavored to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance meeting which first brought us together . . ._

 


End file.
